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TKG: Tom KG, Nicky in full effect, Tameequa in full effect
PAS: Phil Schneider, Rising, Surprising and often Hypnotizing
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PAS: Wander down to Hertz to pick up a rental car to roll to the show, Neverlost GPS sends us on a wacky trip through D.C., before we the the Parkway. Got a little lost but showed up to the armory to catch most of the Afternoon show.

TKG: So Phil calls me. Wakes me up. Reminds me that I am supposed to go to a show today and that it was a morning show. So I race to get to meet Phil at Hertz. I think I am actually more stoked about the morning show than Phil. I used to watch a lot of JAPW shows and nothing was as cool as rookie matches whether they were rookie vs. rookie or veterans beating on rookies. Was disappointed that we got there late.

Carnage Crew v. ROH Students

PAS: This was a squash match with the Crew beating on three of the ROH guys. Hard to get much of a sense of any of them as they didn't get anything in. One of the guys looked like a 1972 high school stoner and took nice bumps. I could see him working a feud with RCE, as a real Iron Maiden fan who thinks hair metal bands are pussies. Maybe he could cut a controversial shoot promo about the Great White fire. We missed the first two squashes, but I don't think this is a particularly good use of students. I imagine that a match or two is part of the Wrestling school con, but they would be better taking the best couple of students and running a couple of young lion style matches. Don't let them do to much, but let them get a sense of how to work. I don't think they will get that taking spiked piledrivers awkwardly.

TKG: One of the worst habits of rookie wrestlers is their tendency to overly cover up from strikes, clinch up prepairing for spots, look over their shoulder getting ready for spots etc. I always kind of understood the logic of stretching/stiffing rookies to be linked to that. You potatoe a rookie, he’ll accept that part of being a wrestler is getting hit and you have to accept that. You potato a rookie and a rookie realizes “well that’s the worst that can happen…I don’t need to be so worried”. No ones ever explained that logic to me ( and I could be wrong), just always assumed that was the logic. And I’ve seen guys go from looking really tentative in matches to looking like wrestlers through the process of stretching/stiffing. That said, the rookie who was in the ring for the great majority of the match (tanned guy who took spike piledriver) looked really tentative; constantly looking to see where spots were going to be coming from, overly blocking/protecting himself, always looked to be preparing for next thing, etc. I thought the guy who looked most ready to wrestle was the kind of pasty large guy with long hair. He wasn’t in the match much but he took all his bumps really nicely and looked really natural doing it. It's really early so I don’t want to say he looked most promising of group, but he looked most currently ready. I should also point out that the Carnage Crew have a lot of kind of complicated spots which probably require more thought and preparation on part of guys taking it, than lets say the Christopher Street Connection. It’s a shame as I really used to enjoy CSC versus rookies matches but given ROH’s history it might be a bad idea to use them to work over highschool age rookies.

C.M. Punk v. Star Pupil

PAS: This was a better use of a student, guy was kind of stocky and looked in actual wrestling shape. Pretty basic stuff, and the guy looked pretty decent on the mat. Punk actually gave him some stuff, before putting him away. Guy wasn't ready for prime time or anything, but looked promising.

TKG: I enjoyed this. Don’t remember too much but enjoyed this. Always fun to have extra heat of rookie’s school classmates in crowd. Punk won with Tenzan's submission. Punk really is too good a wrestler to be watching Tenzan for ideas.

RCE v. Clowdy/Deranged

PAS: This was pretty fun, I really like watching RCE in competitive matches as they have some really fun stuff. ROH has really slowed down and simplified their style, which really leads to better matches. However the memo doesn't seemed to have been passed all the way down the card, as they were busting out some nasty headropps and kicking out of a ton of shit. Really looks bad when the nastiest moves on a card are between your two midcard comedy tag teams. Clowdy is kicking out of shit that would put down your main eventers, shit Dunn is already taller then everyone else on the roster, if he can kick out after getting dropped on the top of his head, why isn't he Kayfabe world champion?

TKG: This was the Marcos show. Dunn stayed out of the match for the most part and damn did Marcos look great. Showing off all his offense and eating the Special K offense. Marcos looked world class here. Cloudy is tiny even by indy standards and its frightening to watch him get accidentally ko'd in every match he’s in.

John Walters v. Alex Shelly

PAS: This started out fine, but Walters can't keep looking good a whole match. By the end he was looking awkward and blowing stuff. Shelly is supposed to be the leader of a big faction, but has been made Walters bitch again and again. Jesus RF is gone, no need to push a guys just because they have sexy stubble.

TKG: Ooh I was not looking forward to this as I well expect bad things from Walters matches. But was surprised as Walters didn’t fall apart for a good chunk of this. Naylor sits next to me and claims that we’re overly critical of Walters and the less educated eye wouldn’t notice the stuff he fucks up. At that point in match, I might have agreed with him. Then as soon as he says it Walters can’t figure out how to apply the submission hold he puts Shelley into, then does this odd kick to midsection and blows one thing after another.

Midnight Express Q+A

PAS: I am not a huge fan of shoot interviews but this was pretty fun. Stan Lane looks ridicolous, with the sideburns, tight black shirt, raver pants and necklace, he is in the midst of the world worse midlife crisis, isn't he fifty? He looks more jacked then he did in '88. They should keep him around, he would be a great creepy old guy buying Special K drugs to try to fuck Becky. "You know they used to call me the Gangster of Love? Do you want some more X?"

TKG: It’s Stan Lane. He had a midlife crisis ten years ago when he got the plugs during his Heavenly Bodies days. His midlife crisis had a midlife crisis as it was just difficult to look at him without cracking up. I don’t even want to know what model sportscar he drives. Condrey is wearing this really great suit with thick woolen socks. And yeah this was fun. No one asks Lane who beat him up in WXO. No one asks Eaton what was up with the Joey Maggs/Eaton version of MX. No one asks Condrey how to get footage of the Nevada indy workers he’s supposedly training. No one asks Corny what an old school guy like him thinks of being stuck with Tommy Dreamer. But this was really about just the good vibes from being in the presence of the MX. This was about what a great storyteller Corny is, and this was about the degree to which these four guys really enjoyed sharing the stage with each other shooting the shit. Near the end of the Q&A Brad Stutts who is a really fun manager who works in the NC indy scene asked a question about Dick Murdoch. Dennis Condrey explains that some point in the early 90s Condrey was running a wrestling school in Denver. Condrey would regularly run shows with students on the undercard and main event of Condrey vs. Murdoch. I don’t know if anyone has a handheld of Denver Condrey student shows main evented by Condrey vs. Murdoch. But I think we have a new Holy Grail for tape traders. Hey Gabe, fuck the straight shooting series…find me the Condrey Denver tapes and put that out on DVD.

PAS: My favorite part of this was probably all the talk about the ribs, I enjoyed the idea of Bobby Eaton as a guy playing very simple ribs. Lane would set something up for weeks, and Eaton would just tie a knot in your straw. I am amused at the idea of such a hard working wrestler being such a lazy practical joker.

TKG: After the Q and A, we go to find food. Ask the Neverlost for local establishments and it claims that there is a Kenny Rogers Roasters near by. I was convinced that they had all gone out of buisness but was excited to eat at one again and so we followed the directions. Well it is out of buisness, but right near there we saw a grand opening for a little Russian restaurant with a name that involved multiple backwards Rs. I dig grand openings but Phil was a little reluctant. Then looked around and realized that the Russian restaurant was part of a Russian mini mall, with a Russian Bingo Hall, Russian language rehab center, Russian grocery, fur store, etc. and we were definitely going there. The restaurant was fucking delicious as all the food was made out of cheese and butter. There was cheesy Eastern European disco playing in the background. Russian patrons wearing leather jackets with no shirts underneath, great friendly waitress who we left a big tip, etc. We leave to go to car when I realize “hey we’re never going to find this place again” so I go back inside to get a card. My waitress is surprised to see me back in; “Is anything wrong”, “No everything was really great, I wanted to see if you had a card”, “WHAT!!! My card? You think I have a card?”. Aw fuck. The waitress is absolutely convinced I’m soliciting her and I’m stuck carefully explaining that I wasn’t after “her” card but rather a card for the restaurant. The misunderstanding is cleared up and her father doesn’t have to kill me for offending the family and I leave with a card from the restaurant. On the one hand I’m glad I wasn’t killed, on the other hand I tipped well, what’s wrong with expecting more form the service.

Rottwillers v. Special K

PAS: This was shockingly great, I haven't really ever felt the Pitbulls, but they were a fun heel tag team here. Both Izzy and Angel Dust looked great working face in peril, and the crowd was really into K as babyfaces. Really well timed comebacks and good work by everyone. Ricky Reyes especially looked good, as he has looked pretty smoked every other time I have seen him

TKG: This was fun basic face/heel tag with a MX tribute finisher spot. Ricky Reyes did look really good here as everything he did seemed on and well timed. Romero was doing a lot of Minoru Suzuki spots; the running ducking the strikes, the stepping on opponent on ropes, the mouthpiece spot, and the way he was pacing his strikes was all very Suzuki-ish. I like Suzuki’s schtick a lot but Romero apeing it didn’t really work for me. He came across as someone who had watched Minoru Suzuki tapes and didn’t understand Suzuki’s background and how the schtick plays into that. Romero actually works New Japan but the stuff didn’t come across as intuitive but rather just pasted on. Reyes was better able to incorporate his stuff into this kind of US tag structure and came across organic and impressed. The important thing in this match was to get Special K over as a team that could hang with the hardhittting Nj Rottweilers. They accomplished that.

PAS: One of the most impressive things about Chris Beniot's career, was that he was a guy who could seamlessly adapt to all styles of wrestling. He is awesome working lucha with Villano 3, NJ juniors with Liger, Southern Tag with Malenko, garbage brawls with Sullivan, U.S. Heavyweight against DDP, you could stick him in any type of match and it would rule. Romero is kind of like the world's most mediocre Beniot, he is fair to middling working U-Style with Hara, middle of the road working lucha as a Brazo tag partner, so-so as a NJ juniors worker, slightly above average working Indy spot tag with the Briscoes and here he is etze ketze as a Southern Tag guy. You can put Romero in any type of match and he will sort of hold his own.

TKG: For the whole match on the apron they worked a Becky Bayless only caring and worried about her guy in the ring while Lacey only cared about her man while J-Train harrased both women. This lead to the end of show where the arguments between the two girls led to a split between Special K. This was well worked in the match and post match without ever interfering with the actual in ring work. I’ve watched a lot of SMW and was really expecting MX to come out at the end of this and for Corny to take out his racket and spank both women. Didn’t happen but just as well. Angle could be cool. Wonder which side Ox Baker’s going to take. Again the match itself accomplished goal of elevating Special K as guys who could credibly hang with Rottweilers. Don't know how smart it is to split them right after doing that.

Jimmy Rave v. Trent Acid v. Josh Daniels v. B.J. Whitmer

PAS: I went to get a mediocre smoothie during this match, as I was expecting this to be the one stinker on the card. I was actually fine, as Rave and Daniels had some nice sections with each other, and Acid and Whitmer mainly stayed out of my way. Really would have rather seen the promised singles match, but I guess they needed to get Whitmer on the card to run the post match angle. Carnage Crew beating on the
garbage can with baseball bats is a neat violent spot.

TKG: Josh Daniels left the Embassy and he should be punished for that, It was up to Rave to do that. Rave and Daniels work really well opposite each other but crowd couldn't give a rats ass. Whitmer and Acid get the crowd's interest but really do little in the ring to deserve it here. This had enough Daniels vs. Rave to entertain me. Allison Danger was in this purple dress and is really great as drunk girl pissed off at guy. She pulled it off really great to point where it almost felt uncomfortable like an episode of "Cops" where drunk girl stood up at prom throws a brick through her boyfriends window. Oh yeah and Loc is in ridiculously great shape, that combined with his new back tattoo and he looks to much like Saturn to work the blue collar job gimmick anymore.

Low-Ki v. Jay Lethal

PAS: Fuck this was great. Both Low-Ki and Julius Smokes are pretty awesome babyfaces, but they are fucking born to be heels. Ki was just killing Lethal and taunting him while beating his ass. Julius meanwhile is calling his mother Aunt Jemima and calling Lethal a house nigger. The heat was as legit as I have ever seen in a smart mark crowd. Ki was killing him, but gave him a bunch of hot comebacks and sold his ass off for both Lethal and his mom. Lethal's family is great too, as this angle would have been ruined if they had been smirking at it, instead his sister is crying and his mom is having a nervous breakdown. Ki actually beating the shit out of her son probably helped. This match was everything that ROH haters claim that the promotion doesn't do, this wasn't guys doing video game moves, this was fucking professional wrestling.

TKG: This was really great and heated. Heels were heels and faces were faces and it worked well. The end was inevitible and everyone knew it, but you were along for the ride. I really didn't like Lethal vs. Punk which was worked in a similar way with Lethal selling huge as though he was being destroyed by Punk for long sections with an attempt at Kenta trial series, kind of what will it take to put him away, feel. Problem was none of Punks offense really felt devastating to the degree that Lethal was selling it. Ki's offense felt devastating and nasty and Lethal selling was just great. And crowd was just moved with every comeback. When Ki hit offense that normally would get "holy shit that was cool response" (ie curb stomping Lethal with Lethal's mouth against bottom rope) the crowd instead was booing. This match got Philly fans to boo the heels and cheer for the faces.

Homicide v. Nigel McGuiness

PAS: This was worked very similarly to the Cide v. AD match earlier this year, as Homicide misses a lariet and torches his arm on the ringpost. Nigel then goes to work on that arm with a bunch of really nifty freaky arm locks. I thought it maybe should have ended 3 or 4 moves before it did, but otherwise it was pretty damn great. Nigel getting the win really elevates him to a top spot, and I think he will work better then the other attempts at getting mat stylish guys over big.

TKG: The kind of match that Lethal and Ki worked is a kind of wrestling that just leaves you absolutely emotionally spent at the end. I for one needed to get some water to hydrate I was so drained. One could bleed or hit big spots after that to try to get spent crowd back in..but thats just stupid and kills the value of the previous match. A smarter approach would be to go to the mat and build a match really slowly and let the crowd regain their composure. And well Homicide vs. Mcguinnes did that. I don't know who to give more credit to the workers or the booker for programing the matches in this order as I imagine Mcguinnes vs. Homicide would be worked slowly building from mat wherever put on card (although probably not as slowly as they did here). But it was really smart to work this match right here. The crowd desperately needed to cool off and so they were more focused than they would otherwise be and this match worked better for the crowd than it would've anywhere else. Slow build wasn't going to make this crowd restless the way it would in other places, this wasn't a heat killer...this was the match the crowd needed and would respond best to. So this was a really slow work the lariat arm match and by the time the lariat was hit the crowd was so totally sucked in that they popped huge for the lariat kick out. and you had a hot crowd for two matches in a row. And we go to intermission.

Generation Next v. C.M. Punk/Jimmy Jacobs/Ace Steel/John Walters

PAS: Really a match of two halves. GN has a bunch of really great triple and quadruple teams and the long opening heat section on Jimmy Jacobs was just awesome. Jacobs is crazy over, and takes a beating like no over. Steamboat is clearly a guy who understands how to put heat on a babyfaces and is a great second throughout this match. After Jacobs gets eliminated however the match kind of falls apart. Ace Steel gets eliminated abrubtly, and then Punk gets DQ'ed which the crowd didn't like at all. That leaves Walters, who may be the least over person on the entire card, working three on one face in peril (Evans had been eliminated earlier.) Crowd couldn't care, Walters work sucks and it just killed this match. It is time to throw in the towel on Walters, they gave him the big win in the bloody feud with Xavier, a title win in his home town, the perfect babyface position in this match and the crowd could give a shit. Walters could cure Steve Williams cancer and he wouldn't be over.

TKG: Jacobs and Steel are normally guys that work exclusively midwest shows. While Walters is a guy who they've pushed really hard on all their shows. So its really telling to see how much more over Steel and Jacobs were to Walters. This wasn't really paced like the other Generation Next matches I've seen. This started with a really fun almost lucha rope running section rudos getting the worst that led to a star with a rana in the middle with. Then it moved into a long face in peril section where the ref was constantly distracted while Jacobs ate one nasty quadruple team after another. I was really impressed with Hanson here. After all the scrambles, I had forgoten how good Hanson is at this type of match, being distracted at right times, showing frustration at right times, struggling to maintain control of match. When the ref demonstrates that he has just given up on maintaining control the story of this kind of match just falls apart. Jacobs is really really good as face in peril eating big stuff and struggling for a tag. After this long hot section of Jacobs eating stuff four on one...it was stupid to end the match with face vs. three heels. Whatever struggle Walters made to fight off odds, it wasn't going to be as impresive as Jacobs. I tried not to turn on this match during the Walters vs. heels section since Steamboat was working his ass off as second trying to encourage face. Steamboat is really good at this. but Walters isn't the face for him to be wasted on, and the set up of this match was going to make Walters work look weak anyway (vis a vis Jacobs). Once Steamboat left, I couldn't be bothered to give a rat's ass about the face/heel structure of this and didn't feel like anyone else could be bothered to either. And well the heat was gone. Oh yeah Ace Steel looked world class here and had one of the first great elbow drops on the show.

MX Interview

PAS: Cornette comes out and gives a big speech about how the Philly fans were the first wrestling fans to start cheering heels, and how that changed wrestling. Of course face v. heel is the only thing that has ever drawn any money in professional wrestling, so by "changed wrestling forever" I assume he meant "ruin wrestling forever."

TKG: Nana comes out and brings in the ageless Ricky Morton who well has always been a fucking great heel. Morton gets on the mic and straight SHOOTS about how Philly doesn't give him or Jimmy Rave the respect they deserve. a Ricky Morton Rave heel team vs. MX would be great. Not necessarily as cool as my fantasy Todd Morton/James Gibson heel team vs. face MX. Either way it will never happen. Of course both Gabe and Corny don't trust that the Philly fans could enjoy a well worked simple face/heel tag match with the limited move sets of old men. Depending on your opinion that either makes Corny and Gabe pussies or really accurate judges of Philly fans. I personally don't know; those Raven v Punk things were really over and Raven really worked like a past his prime Bugsy McGraw in those. But we'll never find out what the crowd will accept. but we did get to see the MX beat up the Embassy. Condrey looked absolutely great in this and Eaton looked like he really shouldn't be doing the rocket launcher and the crowd was left ECSTATIC.

American Dragon v. Samoa Joe

TKG: American Dragon came into this match with an incredible maroon cape and matching Redskins colors tights and boots while Samoa Joe was wearing KENTA's Cleveland Browns trunks. this match was so great that by the end I had forgotten about the greatness of Dragon's cape. I liked Kobashi's return match but even after it was over, Kobashi's cape was better than his work. Dragon has an excellent cape but still doesn't come close to overshadowing his work.

TKG: There really were almost no dives on this show up till this match. Who knew these two would be guys to do the big dive train. DAMNIT did these two deliver a great dive train. I had seen AD's tope before but never the purty springboard tope con hilo he unloaded here. Two years ago Joe was diving all the time, he really has cut it out of his arsenal but here his dives looked better than they ever did. I wrote earlier about how Romero was apeing alot of Suzuki stuff and how it came off forced. Dragon did a bunch of stuff in this that showed the influence of Suzuki without ever feeling contrived, as Dragon had actually internalized the influence and learned how to work it into his own stuff including a really great early smart ass Bugs Bunny frustrating a big man spot by running in circles around him. Throughout the show folks had been doing MX tribute spots, American Dragon says "fuck that shit Ricky Morton is right there" and does a dropkick clinic, hitting one great seated dropkick after another, just a ton of different dropkick variations, all great. These included a fucking NASTY ole ole drop kick on the floor. Dragon has also gotten really great at interacting with the crowd. He used to be a guy who kind of had rep for working in vacuum, Malenko style...but at this point he is about interacting with the crowd playing off their heat, etc. Joe was fucking great in this as his leg selling was near perfect and he just really got over guy hanging on to his title for dear life. Joe actually almost felt like an underdog here as he was selling desperation. This was fucking great and really ended right when it should have.

PAS: I really need to watch this again on tape, but it felt live like the best match this promotion has run. American Dragon is the best wrestler in the world, but there were parts of this where Joe felt like the better guy. It wasn't the entire match, but normally Dragon totally outclass the guy he is in with, here he didn't. Match really flowed well, and it was pretty great in that it didn't have a beginning, middle,and end, as much as it had intense peaks and valleys. There were sections pretty early in this match where it felt like it could end, I especially remember a shot to Dragon's ribs that Naylor was convinced was a match ending injury, but then they would bring the match down a bit, and build to another peak. By the end the crowd was molten, even with all the peaks they didn't blow through finishers, and it really ended when it should have.

TKG: Post match they did one of the dive train brawls that have become a fixture of ROH. The idea being to leave everybody feeeling great with a bunch of holy shit moments. Equivalent of WWE bringing out Autsin at the end of show to drink in front of fans. I understand the purpose of doing this but really felt that after that main event , it wasn't needed. And really doing it felt for lack of proper word "disrespectful" to the main.